BRISTOL, Conn. — Jason Whitlock stood before a group of ESPN employees last week, not in his customary role as a sports columnist, but as the public face of The Undefeated, the media giant’s soon-to-go-live website that will examine race through the prism of sports. With his baggage lost on the flight east from Los Angeles, Whitlock wore a red T-shirt and black warm-up suit. He was warm and funny, and he occasionally teased his largely African-American staff — a style that appeared at odds with his occasionally combustible writing and his firing by ESPN nine years ago for publicly criticizing two of his colleagues.

These days he is a prince of ESPN, a beneficiary of its financial backing to develop a journalistic site that will address issues central to his commentaries.

“We have an awesome opportunity to do something great and important,” he said in his typically bombastic style to his small staff and a much larger audience of ESPN employees from around the company who will support the site — from “SportsCenter” to advertising sales. As he often does in his writing, he cited one of his heroes, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Dr. King,” he said, “sacrificed so we could get this opportunity.”

The Undefeated, which is scheduled to go online in late June, is the newest ESPN website structured around a distinct personality. First came Bill Simmons, whose mashing-up of sports and popular culture is the essence behind Grantland. That was followed by the wonky FiveThirtyEight, the creation of the statistician Nate Silver, who is renowned, aside for his statistical analyses, for the accuracy of his presidential election predictions.

ESPN had thought about creating a site about race for a while, but a meeting in July 2013 between Whitlock and John Skipper, the president of ESPN, persuaded Skipper to hand the job to Whitlock.

“Jason is unafraid to take unpopular stands, to challenge the perceived wisdom of any community,” Skipper said at the ESPN gathering. “I believed Jason could make it work.”

As for bringing Whitlock back to the company, Skipper said: “Talent and intellect can overrule past problems.”

Whitlock’s goal is meaningful and multifaceted: to create a conversation-starting website with in-depth reporting by a staff of largely black journalists; to become a digital and social media hub that celebrates African-American culture, advocates for causes and tells uplifting stories to develop a tight focus on and expand coverage of historically black colleges and universities; and to cover the criminal justice system.

Of the site’s broad ambition, and its targeted audience, Skipper said, “On some level this is a risk, which doesn’t trouble me.”

That risk is not lost on Whitlock, who in an interview asked rhetorically: “ESPN is super successful. Why do something as risky as race?”

There is a simple business rationale: for ESPN to be as popular with African-Americans on the Internet as it is on television, investing in the site, and in Whitlock, is a smart decision.

Whitlock actually produced a playbook to define The Undefeated, which derives its name from a Maya Angelou quotation. Over 54 pages, he mixes his mission statement and his goals with quotations about journalism, truth, courage and risk-taking. King is cited, as are Margaret Mead, Muhammad Ali, John Wooden and, yes, Jason Whitlock.

“The truth is on our side,” Whitlock quotes Whitlock as saying. “We should not fear the truth. It is our best defense.”

The site will not follow the sports news cycle as ESPN.com does as much as comment on relevant issues and personalities. It will feature about five or six new stories a day, some as long as the 9,000-word profile of Charles Barkley, and his roots in Leeds, Ala., that was released recently as a preview. Whitlock, who made his name at The Kansas City Star, will continue to write regular columns.

“This is a thoughtful attempt to talk about issues that touch on race; it’s not all going to be serious,” said Marie Donoghue, the ESPN executive vice president who oversees Grantland, FiveThirtyEight and The Undefeated. “It will also be joyful.”

Whitlock said that he has spent more than a year building support for the site inside ESPN, demonstrating the seriousness of his intent by evangelizing on its behalf and trying to put his long-ago dismissal into the shredder of corporate history.

“It’s been difficult to get some people to wrap their heads wrapped around this, that it is worth doing, but it’s going to make us better,” Whitlock said in an interview.

After years of managing only himself, he is learning to guide others and recruit a staff, although Leon Carter, the editorial director, runs the site’s day-to-day operations. Still, as a leader-in-training, with his name on the site’s home page as a presenter, Whitlock brings a résumé that is notably different from that of Simmons or Silver. He writes frequently about race, sometimes audaciously, sometimes in anger. He reviles hip-hop and is especially critical of Jay-Z. He’s acted immaturely at times. He left ESPN and, then, The Star, in a public uproar.

“Whatever my critics say, I’ve been a hard-core journalist all my career,” Whitlock said. “Have I been an entertainer, a provocateur and a humorist? Absolutely. But we’ll be about journalism at this site.”

“I’m a healthy-sized target,” he said, a subtle reference to his weight (Whitlock played offensive tackle at Ball State). “No one should feel sorry for me. I didn’t brown-nose my way here. I pulled out guns and shot my way here. So people don’t mind shooting back. If I’d gotten here brown-nosing and playing all the political games, I’d probably be treated differently. But it’s like, ‘Hey, Whitlock likes to fight and wrestle,’ so people want to fight and wrestle me. Now, I’m at the top, and I can’t fight and wrestle anymore — so that inspires people to fight and wrestle me.”

Email: sandor@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 13 of the New York edition with the headline: For ESPN’s New Website on Race, a Fervent and Familiar Persona. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe